eyeshadow

Review: LORAC Private Affair Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/08/24 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, eyeshadow, fall  |  Comments (10)

This post is entirely the fault of Chaosbydesign, who seduced me into breaking my low-buy and running to Sephora to pick up this palette. Just so you know.

Here’s a conversation that I doubt actually happened at LORAC product headquarters:

“Hey, Ed?”

“Yeah, Bill?”

“I have a problem with the packaging for the new Private Affair palette.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Well, Ed, it … uh … kind of looks like a coffin.”

::pause::

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, Ed, it kind of does.”

“Maybe we should put more handles on it.”

“Actually, I think that would make it worse.”

… but like I said, I doubt this conversation took place because they made the damn thing anyway and it DOES look like a coffin. I know that Twilight is still coasting on its (hopefully short-lived) wave of popularity, but come on, people. LORAC is above this. Right? Right?

Anyhoo. Yes, I just did a LORAC palette review the other day, but this one is just out and I want to review it now so you can pick it up for fall if you’re interested.

Purple is very, very hip for fall, which is just fine by me. No blush in this one — it’s six shades of eyeshadow, plus (in the little pull-out drawer) a mini version of LORAC’s Behind the Scenes eye primer and a completely useless double-ended brush which you ought to just throw out immediately because it’s so prickly it’ll poke your eyes out. Had they not bothered with the drawer, the palette 1) would not look like a coffin, and b) would be so much more slim and suitable for travel (as CBD pointed out in her comment on a previous post). I’m going to try to figure out if I can put anything else in that drawer; there’s a divider in it that isn’t meant to be removable, but that divider hasn’t met me yet, so we’ll see who wins on that one.

Like the shadows in the Croc palette, these are a little too loosely pressed, I think. Too much shadow gets kicked up by the brush, and it’s more work to prevent fallout than it ought to be. The texture is generally up to LORAC’s standard, but I wish that some of the colors had been tweaked just a bit. I did an eye look below using only shadows from the palette, but I suspect that in real life I’ll end up mixing them with other shades from other brands.

The colors are listed as follows: creamy beige with pearl (I’d describe this as champagne gold), champagne rose with shimmer (this is the cooler, more silvery version of the first one), soft taupe with pearl, platinum grey with pearl, deep wine with shimmer (this one is the biggest win in the set), and black with sparkle (it’s not really black, and the sparkle is purple and quite noticeable).

Closeup, swatches, and a look done with the palette:

A look done with the LORAC Private Affair palette. This is just a little too dark for work, but I’d definitely wear it for an evening out. From left-to-right in the photo above, shades 1 & 2 used as highlighter, 3 and 5 on the lid, 5 in the crease, and 6 in the outer corner and as eyeliner (applied with a liner brush; not the one that came with the palette, though). Shadows applied over TFSI; mascara is Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes! I have some other, less-dramatic looks in mind for this palette, or at least for some of the colors in it.

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LORAC Private Affair Palette: $38, exclusively at Sephora

Provenance: Purchased. Under duress. By Chaosbydesign. She made me.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Only a “Fair” on this one, because of the unnecessary inclusion of the scratchy brush and the poor packaging.

Purchase again? Oof! I hope that I hate their holiday palette so that I won’t be running to Sephora or ULTA to pick it up.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: LORAC Croc Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/08/20 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, blush, eyeshadow  |  Comments (4)

Don’t hate me.

I think I found a palette that I like better than the UD Naked Palette.

<ducks to avoid flying pieces of rotten vegetables>

All right, as well as the UD Naked Palette. OK?

I still love my UD, but I picked this one up for travel and ended up using it almost every day I was away, which is really rare for me (I am so fickle!). The colors appealed to me because they lean towards copper rather than bronze, and they make my green eyes pop really well. The Naked palette tends to lean towards yellower shades, and those make me look a little jaundiced if I’m not careful. I purchased some LORAC shadows from HauteLook several months ago and hated them, so I was really dubious about these, but the colors were just too nice to resist.

The LORAC Croc Palette has four eyeshadows: Moonstone (soft champagne), Serenity (peachy champagne bronze), Garnet (copper), and Suede (chocolate). Suede is matte; all the others have shimmer. The palette also includes a powder blush in shade Soul, which is a browned rose that I probably won’t use much until fall really kicks in; it’s a little dark for summer. The eyeshadows are nicely well-pigmented and very smooth; I had a little bit of fallout during application, but nothing that wasn’t easily removed — and that frankly couldn’t have been prevented had I been less hasty in application. They did not crease over TFSI and they stayed vibrant all day. The palette does not come with a brush (yay!!! no extra cost for bad mini-brushes!), so you’ll have to use your own, which is better anyway. The outside of the case is faux croc, and it has a magnetic closure, which is nice to make sure the palette doesn’t open itself up in your purse.

Moonstone and Serenity are not all that different from one another; I used Moonstone as a wash, Serenity on the lid, Garnet in the crease, and Suede in the outer corner. The photos below show the colors applied over TFSI with Neutrogena Spiced Chocolate eyeliner, Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes! mascara, and Tarte emphasEYES brow pencil. (Unrelated: New Blogger Lesson #51 — Taking pictures of eye makeup is hard. I just discovered a whole new thing I suck at!)

Swatches and photos:

L-R: Soul blush; Suede, Garnet, Serenity, Moonlight eyeshadows

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LORAC Croc Palette: $36

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good.

Purchase again? Yes, and they’ve got a new one out for the fall that’s tempting me.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Make Up For Ever Aqua Essentials Kit (Sephora Beauty in a Box)

By Voxy  |  2010/07/31 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, eyeliner, eyeshadow, lip pencil  |  Comments (3)

Since we are still in the Sweaty Glowy Summer Season and you may be in the market for sweatproof, waterproof, budgeproof cosmetics, I thought I’d review the rest of the products in the Make Up For Ever Aqua Essentials Set, available from Sephora for $69. This turned out to be a very mixed bag for me; some products perform excellently, others … not so much.

First of all you will remember that I am apparently the only person on the planet who didn’t like the long-awaited and much-lemminged Aqua Creams. I’m going to give them another chance, though, and will report back if I get better results.

The kit also comes with a lip pencil, two eye pencils, a waterproof mascara, and a small bottle of eye makeup remover for waterproof makeup. All except the eye makeup remover are full-size products. I can’t comment on the mascara because I’m still finishing up a tube of Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes and so I haven’t even opened it. (Since mascara goes bad so quickly, I really hate to have more than one open at a time.) I also try to stay away from waterproof mascara since my eyes are so sensitive to mascara flakes and it’s harder to remove waterproof mascara cleanly than it is to remove non-waterproof mascara.

Speaking of that, the makeup remover works perfectly well. I wish I could get more excited about it than that, but that’s about all the rah-rah I’ve got. It’s a lotion rather than a liquid; no shaking or mixing required. It works. It’s neither better nor worse than most other makeup removers I’ve tried. It’s no Lancome Bi-Facil, but it does the job.

The lip pencil, sadly, is not as good as I wanted it to be. I compared notes with Marigolds on the subject and she has the same opinion. The shade is nice, and is a neutral terracotta that should be good for a variety of skintones, but it just doesn’t last, even with TFLI underneath it. Sorry, MUFE, but Urban Decay has it all over you in the lip pencil department.

By way of redemption, though, the MUFE eye pencils are quite nice. The two that come in the kit are black and a kind of bluish-gray. Excellent for making smoky eyes, but just as capable (when sharpened) of very satisfactory tightlining. They stay put on the lashline (so long as you’ve got a good primer underneath) and hold their color for most of the day.

Is it worth purchasing? Well, if you like the Aqua Creams, which retail for $22 apiece, and you like the Aqua Eyes eye pencils, which retail for $17 apiece, then buying this kit will save you $9 over purchasing those products separately, and you get a full-size lip pencil, full-size mascara, and small bottle of makeup remover thrown in for good measure.

Swatches!

Left to right: Aqua Creams in #13 Warm Beige and #15 Taupe, Aqua Eyes pencils in Mat Black 0L and Dark Grey 21L, Aqua Lip in Nude Beige 1C (and by the way, “nude beige” absolutely does not describe this color).

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MUFE Aqua Essentials Kit: $69 at Sephora

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): For me, since I dislike the Aqua Creams, poor. However, if the products work for you, this could easily turn out to be an Excellent.

Purchase again? Not this one, but that’s not to say I won’t be suckered in by future offerings…

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Stila “It Girl” Eyeshadow Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/07/14 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, eyeshadow, shimmer, steal  |  Comments (6)

Stila’s summer deal prices are so low they’re virtually giving stuff away, so if you’ve been itching to try some of their products, you can probably pick up some good bargans. Case in point: the $10 Stila “It Girl” Eyeshadow Palette.

This palette contains three almost-full-size eyeshadows: Kitten (a sparkly white-gold color that is their most ubiquitous shade; it seems like you can hardly buy anything from Stila without tripping over Kitten*), plus two limited-edition shades that are exclusive to this palette: Lamé (gold) and Chloe (brown). The palette is larger than I expected, and I wonder if they could have gotten away with less packaging as it seems slightly bulky. I don’t mind that the shadows are slightly less than full-sized; I think that most of the time products are too large anyway, and besides, $10 is less than you would pay for a single full-size Stila shadow, which retails for $18 and doesn’t even come in any sort of container that closes. (They sell them in pans with the idea that you’re also going to buy an empty Stila palette and make your own.)

As I’ve mentioned before, in general I like the quality of Stila’s eyeshadows a lot, and if you’re a fan of shimmer and sparkle, this palette won’t disappoint. For me, Kitten is too shimmery (almost metallic) to be used over the full lid, but it works beautifully as an accent or (when applied very lightly) as a highlighter. Lamé is too yellow to work on my pink-toned skin except as part of a bronze-and-copper look, but Chloe is a warm golden brown that’s very attractive.

Close-ups and swatches!

Kitten

Lamé (top), Chloe (bottom)

L-R: Lamé, Chloe, Kitten

*No actual Kittens were harmed in the writing of this post.

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Stila “It Girl” Palette: $10

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent! Would love a version with cool neutrals as well (and no Kitten!).

Purchase again? Probably.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Urban Decay Naked Eyeshadow Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/07/09 18:07 Posted in Product Reviews, eyeliner, eyeshadow  |  Comments (12)

Let’s hear it for nakedness!!!

Wait. Why am I the only one cheering?

::looks around in dismay::

::lowers pom-poms embarrassedly::

Ahem. Okay, let’s hear it for the Urban Decay Naked Eyeshadow Palette!

Although I know that I was one of the first to click the “buy” button on the UD website when the palette went live, my mailman seems to have interpreted the term “Priority Mail” as “bring it whenever the heck you want,” and so I only just received it. (Minor peeve: Dear UD, please send your Priority Mail packages with Delivery Confirmation so that we can continue to obsessively stalk our packages as they move across the country.) If my mailman were not a 65-year-old cigar-smoking Manly Man, I would have suspected that the package had taken a small detour.

But! Here it is, and here are photos and swatches.

I’ve long been a fan of UD eyeshadows. They are some of the nicest shadows you can get at this price point — smooth, well-pigmented, and blendable. Yes, you can beat their quality if you go really high-end, but frankly $84 for an eyeshadow palette is more than I want to pay (yes, Guerlain Fall 2010, I’m looking at you). And yes, there are a few UD shadows that don’t live up to the quality of the rest of the line: some are way too glittery for anyone but Lady Gaga to wear, some have a problem with fallout, and some are not quite as nice in texture. But for the most part, this is a very strong line and I recommend them to anyone who is looking to upgrade from a drugstore shadow. In addition to the regular shadows, which retail for $17 for 0.05 oz, UD also makes a smaller line of “deluxe” shadows that are $18 for 0.09 oz. Yes, those numbers are correct: the “deluxe” shadows are $1 more for almost twice as much product. Shh, don’t tell UD.

Also don’t tell UD that the creation of this Naked palette, which contains looks for neutral and smoky eyes, with twelve full-size shadows, a double-headed 24/7 eye pencil, and a deluxe sample size UDPP, all for $44, pretty much guarantees that no one will be buying any of those shades in single shadow pots for $17 each. For the life of me I cannot figure out why this is a permanent and not LE palette.

The shadows are a mix of matte and shimmer shades; one or two of them tip the needle all the way to “frosty,” but I think almost all of the shades would look good on almost all skin tones. From left to right:

Virgin: Slightly frosty vanilla
Sin: Shimmery light cocoa
Naked: Matte ecru
Sidecar: Shimmery light brown (this one is especially glittery)
Buck: Matte cocoa
Half Baked: Gold (very metallic)
Smog: Shimmery bronze
Darkhorse: Umber (some shimmer)
Toasted: Shimmery rose-copper, and one of my favorite UD shades ever
Hustle: Shimmery plummy-brown
Creep: Slightly shimmery dark grey
Gunmetal: Shimmery blue-grey, like … uh, gunmetal.

The double-headed 24/7 eyeliner pencil has Zero (black) on one end, and Whiskey (matte brown) on the other. Whiskey is a new shade created for this palette, as are Virgin, Buck, Darkhorse, Hustle, and Creep. Sidecar is, as far as I can determine, a repromote from UD’s first Book of Shadows collection.

Swatches!

L-R: Virgin, Sin, Naked, Sidecar

L-R: Buck, Half Baked, Smog, Darkhorse

L-R: Toasted, Hustle, Creep, Gunmetal

L-R: Zero, Whiskey, UDPP

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Urban Decay Naked Eyeshadow Palette: $44 (also newly available at Sephora)

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent. Better than Excellent. They’re practically paying you to take it. In fact, you won’t have to give up the shirt off your back to get Naked. (Ha! Get it? Yeah, another one of those stupid puns no one else thinks is funny. Ow, stop throwing things.)

Purchase again? Assuredly.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Stila Road To Radiance Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/06/30 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, blush, eyeshadow  |  Comments (3)

You know, for someone who says she doesn’t like palettes, I’m sure ending up with a lot of them these days.

Stila has put out a couple of exceptional bargains this summer: first the It Girl palette of three eyeshadows (including the ubiquitous shade Kitten) for $10 (review and swatches in a future post), and now the Road to Radiance mini-palette, containing four eyeshadows and a convertible color pan, also for $10.

Although I’m as much a fan of pink and purple eyeshadow as anyone (and, OK, probably more than some people), I admit that I bought this palette solely for the convertible color. I love the Stila CCs, and this shade (Hibiscus) is not produced in a full-size pan but it looked like the cool-but-not-neon-frosty pink that I’d always wanted Stila to make.

The palette is the tiniest bit gimmicky — pulling this out of your handbag would not be at all like displaying a sleek, intricate metal palette by Guerlain or Givenchy. This palette won’t get you any street cred among the Ladies Who Lunch crowd. It’s no-frills, made of cardboard, and clearly targeted towards the younger set. (It does, however, have a mirror, which is a plus.) The eyeshadows, while not bad, are not quite up to the usual Stila standard in terms of texture and pigmentation. I’ve heard that this is because they outsourced it to China. Even if they did, this is true of a lot of companies — their palettes are not produced at the same facilities or even in the same countries as their regular products, which is often why the quality of palettes is worse.

There are four eyeshadows: Snow Bunny (very light, frosty lavender), Valley Girl (darker lavender that goes on with a pink tinge), Southern Belle (pink), and City Chick (looks dark purple in the pan, but goes on more of a purply-brown color). Interestingly, Stila has made the (IMHO wise) decision to not even try to include a brush, or, worse, one of those horrendous sponge applicators, which are a blight on the earth and which should be permanently consigned to the Failed Cosmetic Applicator Ideas graveyard. Not only does it remove the temptation for you to use a lamentably poor applicator or a tiny brush that would (by necessity) be of lesser quality, it helps keep the palette light and sleek and the cost low. I wish more companies would do this!

So the shadows are a bit below Stila’s usual quality, but since I basically think of this palette as a $10 convertible color that happens to come with some bonus eyeshadows, this is all OK with me. The quality of the convertible color is quite nice; I haven’t noticed a significant difference in quality between this and any of my other CCs. The color is not quite as cool as I had imagined it would be, but it’s very nice and exceptionally wearable, and it fills a hole in Stila’s current shade offerings. Stila CCs are easy to apply and blend and they last all day without fading.

This is apparently the first of five palettes Stila plans to put out in this series, so we’ll see what the future installments look like!

I’m working on my photography skillz, so I’m trying some closeups as well as swatches on skin.

Shadows, left to right: Snow Bunny, Valley Girl, Southern Belle, City Chick; Convertible Color in Hibiscus on the right; I’ve tried to blend it out so you could imagine it as a cheek color.

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Stila Road to Radiance Palette: $10

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent! Let’s just hope the convertible color retains its creaminess and doesn’t dry out.

Purchase again? Depends on the cheek color, but very possibly yes. We’ll see what’s out next month!

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Smashbox Iconic Eyes Kit

By Voxy  |  2010/06/27 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews, brushes, eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara  |  Comments (11)

Dammit.

Dear Smashbox, I was *so* not going to get this kit. Really. Wasn’t gonna do it. Then you sucked me in with that gorgeous, gorgeous picture of the blue-and-brown smoky eye. And I admit it, I was tempted. Mostly because of the blue. That’s a really nice shade of blue. And then unfortunately I happened to stop by ULTA to pick up some facial cleanser (my brand of which they no longer appear to carry, WTF?) and there was the display/tester setup of the products in this kit. And because I was annoyed about not being able to get my facial cleanser, I decided that I would just test out that blue shadow, you know, just to see. Because the trip shouldn’t have been for nothing, right? And dammit AGAIN, that blue was a really nice shade on my hand. And the other colors in that palette were nice too. Crap. Smashbox, you suck.

Of course I bought it. What do you think I am made of, stone?

So. This little wonder-in-a-box contains the following: a mirrored eyeshadow quad (the shades seem, oddly, to be unnamed, but there’s a blue, a chocolate brown, and two highlighter shades, one peachy, one pinkish), a dual cream liner pot in “Infamous” (blue/brown), a deluxe sample size of Smashbox’s Photo Finish eyelid primer, a full-size Bionic Mascara, and two brushes (one shadow, one flat liner). Really, it’s quite a lot of product for $47, and it comes with instructions on how to create the various looks shown on the front of the box.

The four shades in the shadow quad are all quite nice; the darker shades are well-pigmented and the blue maintains its blue color and doesn’t go grey on skin (a pet peeve of mine about blue shadows). The highlighter colors are very light; it’s possible to blend the shadows to get a nice gradient from light to dark but you will need a bit of patience since they’re so far apart to start with.

I was excited to try the Photo Finish lid primer, and I used it instead of my regular TFSI. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a win for me, since I had some creasing and some color loss in the shadow as the day went on.

I haven’t had a huge amount of luck with Smashbox creme eyeliners; on me they have tended to smudge and fade. But, as with another recent review product, I haven’t tried them since I started wearing MAC paint pots as eyeshadow bases. So I’ll be trying them again, hopefully with better results. The brown half of the liner is a nice rich color; the blue half looks great in the pot but does that thing that I hate and turns to blue-grey on my skin. (I’ll be sticking with my MAC Petrol Blue Pearlglide eyeliner pencil for a blue liner.)

I haven’t broken out the mascara yet, only because I already have a mascara open and since they go bad more quickly than other cosmetics I like to only have one going at a time. In case you are curious, the “Bionic”-ness of it is explained by Smashbox as follows: “BIONIC is the first-ever ionic formula mascara. The primary ingredient in BIONIC is a chain molecule with a positive charge. The friction caused by sweeping the mascara brush across lashes causes a negative charge. Since opposites attract, the positively charged formula adheres to the negatively charged lashes for a dramatic effect that lasts all day.” (We will ignore the fact that the first listed ingredient in the mascara is, er, water.) Since the Bionic mascara is also sold on its own, I may review it when I get around to changing mascaras.

I like Smashbox brushes a lot, though I’d have preferred a slanted liner brush to a squared-off one, since I find these easier to use in applying cream liners. The shadow brush is nice: not too large, grabs product well, blends well, no prickly bristles on sensitive eyelid skin.

Products and swatches:

Liner shades on left, shadow on right. You can hardly even see the two highlighter shades on my skin; that’s how light they are.

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Smashbox Iconic Eyes Kit: $47

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. If all of the products were as good as the shadow, it’d be Excellent.

Purchase again? Yes; in general I like their kits though I rarely have 100% success with all the products in them.

(Have you used these products? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Want ‘em? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Make Up For Ever Aqua Creams

By Voxy  |  2010/06/16 23:07 Posted in Product Reviews, blush, eyeliner, eyeshadow, trends  |  Comments (4)

I have held off on writing this review as long as I could, but the time has come.

Let’s say you have a really good student in class who, inexplicably, at the end of the term, turns in a surprisingly crappy final project. And so you send the following email:

Dear Make Up For Ever,

Ha ha! You seem to have inadvertently sent me the leftover crusty paints from your fifth grade art project in lieu of the fabulous Aqua Creams I was expecting. What a joker you are! The rest of your work is so consistently good that I am sure that this was some farcical error that we will laugh about someday. I can try to grade your product last so that you will have time to send me the utter fabulousness that I’m sure you meant to turn in.

Chortling heartily,

Voxy

::radio silence::

Uh… Oh. Really? Oh.

Huh.

All righty then.

I am going to go out on a limb as one of the few beauty bloggers who seems not to be gaga over these Make Up For Ever Aqua Creams. Seriously, everyone seems to be in love with them except me. Let me be perfectly frank — I wanted to be gaga. I anticipated gaga-ness. I positively dreamt of gagaliciousness. And it is only after several days’ testing that I have to admit defeat and say that I just can’t get my gaga on over these products.

There are, for me, three problems with these creams. First, they are not really creams. A cream should have the consistency of cake frosting. It should be, well, creamy. The texture of these “creams,” though, is more like — warning: strange comparison ahead — the baked meringue layer of a lemon meringue pie. If you tried to swirl a brush through a lemon meringue pie, which I am not suggesting that you do, you would end up with small gobs of meringue and a slightly wet brush — but you would not have a cream. Seriously, that’s what these remind me of.

Second, they are difficult to apply smoothly with either a brush or fingers. A cream should, IMHO, be more workable than these are, and no matter how careful I am, if I even approach the upper lash line, I get the cream equivalent of fallout beneath my lower lashes. And, since these are long-lasting and virtually waterproof, that fallout is extremely difficult to remove. So I can’t get the product where I want it, but it inevitably ends up where I don’t want it, and then I can’t get it off. Lovely.

Third, and I’m sorry to say this, since I have such respect for MUFE as a line, but the packaging just feels cheap. Something that costs $22 should come in a glass jar, not in a thin plastic jar with a lid that’s difficult to replace (the threads in the lid just don’t seem to want to catch — and this is true of all four of the colors I have). MAC has it all over MUFE in this regard.

I have three shades designated for eyes (#13 Warm Beige, #15 Taupe, and #22 Emerald Green) and one for cheeks and lips (#5 Peach). The peach looks gorgeous in the pot, but as soon as I dipped into it I found that immediately below the surface (which was relatively matte-looking) was a surprising amount of gold shimmer. The color is all wrong for a blush for me — and don’t even think of using it on your lips unless you are going for the Tin Man’s Girlfriend look. The #13 and #15 are OK shades, but given the problems with consistency and application, they are not going to ever be my go-to bases for neutral shadows. And while the #22 Emerald Green shade is a gorgeous color, it proved surprisingly difficult to work with in building a base for a look with green + blue, gold, or brown shadow. I also really wanted #19, which is a fabulous purple, but it’s not being sold in the US because apparently there is an ingredient that’s not cosmetically approved here.

I’ll keep them, and find ways to use them, but I confess myself greatly disappointed.

Maybe you’ve had better luck? I’m open to my mind being changed…

Swatches!

#5 Peach, #22 Emerald Green

#13 Warm Beige, #15 Taupe. Don’t ask me why my skin appears white in this one. I give up.

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Make Up For Ever Aqua Creams: $22 (Sephora exclusive at the moment)

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Oooh. Toughie. If I liked the product, I’d probably say Fair. (The packaging really does bother me.) Given that I don’t like the product, I’m going with Poor.

Purchase again? Doubtful.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Stila Eye Shadow Trios

By Voxy  |  2010/06/12 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, eyeshadow  |  Comments (0)

If you’re wondering what to use that 20% Stila F&F discount on, I have a suggestion. (You knew I would.)

One of the best eyeshadow purchases I’ve made since starting this blog (and since starting this blog there have been MANY eyeshadow purchases, all of which are your fault — yes, you) is Stila’s eyeshadow trio in Goddess. In the photo at the top, that’s the one furthest to the left.

Because Goddess was so divine (get it? ow, stop throwing things), I decided to get Bella (center) and Venus (right), neither of which are as good as Goddess, but both of which have at least one exceptionally nice color in them. They are all shimmery/metallic, but not unwearably so, and you can always tone down the shimmer a bit with some matte powder.

In theory, these eyeshadow trios have one shade to use as a highlighter under the brow (the lightest shade), one to use over the full lid (the medium shade), and one to use in the crease (the darkest shade). In actuality they don’t always go together all that well for me. Let’s talk about Goddess. The medium shade, the one for the lid, is an exceptionally gorgeous golden copper. Not too red, not too orange. As someone with cool/pink skin, bronzes are sometimes really hard for me, but this is beautiful. The crease shade in this compact is also very nice, though it’s a bit darker on skin than it appears in the compact. The highlighter, however, is a silvered gold, which is a little too cool to go perfectly with the rest of the palette. You can make it work, but I wish they’d picked something a tiny bit warmer.

Bella and Venus aren’t quite as usable, mostly because I think the various shades are too far away from each other, particularly in Venus. That shade on the far left is so cool it’s almost grey, the crease shade is quite warm but very dark, and the highlighter shade is very, VERY light. However, as I said, they each have at least one great color: Bella’s warm pink lid color is gorgeous, as is Venus’ dark crease shade. They go with each other quite well.

These shadows have excellent staying power and blend easily. I advise pressing or rolling the brush into the pan rather than swiping it; the shadows are not super-firmly pressed, so it’s very easy to accidentally kick up a lot of shadow dust, and this is not a product to waste.

The swatches came out a little strange, but they’re as accurate as I can make them. On my laptop they look awfully light, but on my desktop computer the colors are pretty accurate.

Left: Goddess
Center: Bella
Right: Venus

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Stila Eye Shadow Trios: $20

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. $20 is a bit much for one eyeshadow pan, but you get three colors, so that mitigates it somewhat. And you know my rant about cosmetics containers being too big anyway.

Purchase again? Goddess, absolutely.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Tokidoki Cromatico Eye Shadow Palette — Bastardino

By Voxy  |  2010/06/05 20:46 Posted in Product Reviews, eyeshadow  |  Comments (3)

Sonnet: To Tokidoki, About Your Packaging

(stolen brazenly from Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
Thy box takes far more depth and breadth and height
Than it could need. It surely is not right
That such a small thing should use so much space.
I hate thee, though thy contents I embrace
For they look well in sun and candlelight.
I hate thee freely, and am not contrite;
I hate thee purely, yet feel no disgrace.
I hate thee though I love these shadow’d hues
Thou holdst within, ‘neath skull and bones and wraith.
I dropped thee on my foot; thou left a bruise.
The packaging on all thy line’s fair breadth —
Craptacular, the lot! and, though I’ll use,
I’d love thee more wert thou not wrapped in death.

Sorry. “Hate” is a strong word, especially when you say it so many times, but it’s been a while since I bastardized some poetry and this was convenient. And speaking of bastardization, the product up for review today is Tokidoki’s eye shadow quad in Bastardino.

As you can tell from the poem above, the in-a-nutshell review is that I really like their products but, er, slightly dislike the packaging. OK, yes, I hate it. I hate it for three reasons: 1.) If you are still into cartoon characters, you are probably too young for makeup, and the heart-shaped-skull-and-crossbones thing is kind of weird anyway; b) The edges and corners of the plastic box that houses this eyeshadow quad are quite sharp — I really did drop it on my foot and it really did leave a bruise, and iii) you know how I feel about wasted space in packaging, and this one’s got it in spades.

The actual eyeshadow palette (and I’ll be generous and include the lid) takes up only 1/3 of the depth of the plastic box. The other 2/3 of the space inside the box is a holding container for a little plastic charm of the tokidoki character after which the quad is named. WTF? I don’t need a toy with my makeup, thank you very much, and I really dislike how big and clunky this unnecessary “feature” makes the product. In fact, the packaging was so much of a turn-off for me that I planned to avoid the line altogether — until I swatched some of the products in Sephora and I’ll be damned if they weren’t actually impressive.

Tokidoki’s beauty division is a relatively new addition to the brand, which is based on the Japanese-inspired art of Italian designer Simone Legno and whose bizarre and slightly macabre characters can be found adorning everything from handbags to hats to shirts to toys to jewelry to iPhone skins to … well, you get the idea. So far, these products are Sephora exclusives.

The individual eyeshadows are also of excellent quality (and also annoyingly overpackaged), but at $15 a pop for an individual shade vs. $25 for a palette of four shades, all of which I like, the quad was the better bargain. Yes, you get less of each color than you do in the singles, but since I rarely manage to use up an entire eyeshadow pan anyway, this wasn’t a big deal for me.

This particular palette is named Bastardino after the character, who is apparently some sort of spiny prickly cactus/dog combination, and it contains four shades, all of which are also named after characters. As per the top photo — top left: Carnivora (light frosty champagne peach, not unlike Stila Kitten); top right: Riposino (light cappuccino shimmer); bottom left: Mummetto (matte medium dark brown); bottom right: Bastardino (green with gold shimmer). I’m always on the lookout for wearable shades of green eyeshadow, and when it came packaged with three other shades that were all winners for me, then I had to stuff my snark in a sack and buy it. The shadows are all nicely pigmented — not so strongly that you can accidentally overapply with one stroke, but very buildable. They have a lovely smooth skin-feel and with primer I didn’t have any trouble with fading or creasing.

Swatches! From left to right: Carnivora (almost impossible to swatch on my skin), Riposino, Mummetto, Bastardino.

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Tokidoki Cromatico Eye Shadow Palette (Bastardino): $25

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): In spite of the quality of the product, I’m giving this a “poor” because of the wastefulness of the packaging and how much space it takes up. Its size effectively prevents it from being useful for travel, unless you make it serve dual duty by using the bottom cavity to store earrings or small children.

Purchase again? We’ll see. I really, really, REALLY hate the packaging of the whole line.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)